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Smartphones have made traveling immeasurably easier. And I don’t think that was entirely free.
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I experience a sense of grief every time a great TV series ends. The sadness that there isn't going to be any more of it, the irrational feeling that there's never going to be anything as good, and the sensation of emptiness inside. It's a strong emotional response, not very different from losing someone you love, with the obvious differences in intensity.
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In the last week I've found myself in two situations where I had to explain that despite all the crap I've been through, I wouldn't change a thing. That I love who I am, and I'm the product of everything I've lived, hence, I shall love all that past shit as much as I love past sunshine and rainbows.
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I've always been a hoarder. I refuse to get rid of things, and that goes both for the box of cables and old electronics down in that cabinet in my office and for the files in my Google Drive, external hard drives, on my computers and phone.
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I miss email as a personal communication tool. Surely I still use it, but it is 20% paper trail for transactions, and 80% cold-messaging from companies I don't know—or plain old spam, if there's even a difference.
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This is a note from my journal that works as a constant reminder of being kind, something that's very important on my current journey. I share it here because, as simple and silly as it may seem, sometimes finding something simple at the right time can give someone a shift in perspective, and I've found innumerable things on my own path that I'm extremely grateful for.
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I never did drugs in my youth because I was too afraid, but I always had this curiosity of how it would feel to be high. I imagined pure awesomeness and bliss.
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Desde muy pequeño he estado asustado con la idea de la muerte en general, la de mis seres queridos, y especialmente la idea de la mía propia.
Aunque con los años he podido ir gradualmente y a cierto nivel reconciliándome con la idea, este miedo empezó siendo paralizante. Al nivel de ser un niño de 6 años que no podía dormir pensando en eso.
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— Hi, I’m Mateo Pérez
— Hello, I’m Axel Valdez. I just got here yesterday
— So, what do you do exactly?
— I’m a UI designer, and I also do front-end code. Mostly HTML and CSS, but also some JavaScript, usually for interaction stuff
— For how long have you been doing these things?
— It’s been like... 15 years now. Wow.
— And what do you like the most?
— CSS, definitely. I would be happy if I got to just do CSS forever.
— Alright. That was your English test. You’re fine.
That was my first interaction with Matt Perez, on my second day at Nearsoft in 2011. He kinda intimidated me at that time, mostly because I had read a lot about him on social media, and he was already a legend for founding Nearsoft, this weird and utopian software development joint in Hermosillo. At that time we were small. About 35 people including designers, software engineers, recruiters, and admin staff.
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With time, our memories start jumbling up, tangling, getting fuzzy.
I feel like I lived a lifetime from 15 to 20, then from 40 to 45 it was a blink. Some people say it’s the percentage of your life those years represent. I don’t think it works like that. I think i’ts a problem of us not being mindful of the things we live.
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With each day that passes, I increasingly remember the pandemic with a positive twist.
It was far from good. It wreaked havoc on my mental health at first, but perhaps it is a blessing that my mind chooses to retain the positive aspects and bury the rest
I miss being all day at home with my wife and my kids. Rationally I know it was difficult, especially with a three-year-old rightfully demanding attention, but I miss it anyway. Those times evoke feelings of intimacy, closeness, and profound love. Such immense love.
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There is this quote from drummer Keith Moon I heard from Ira Glass and deeply resonated with me:
I am the best Keith Moon-style drummer in the world.
It reminded me of my approach to work for my first few years of employment at Nearsoft, a company that heavily promoted self-management. I divided my work into two categories: tasks I had to do and tasks I wanted to do. Although both types of work were part of my daily routine, I prioritized completing the "had-to" tasks quickly to ensure I had more time for the "want-to" tasks.
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After six and a half weeks in lockdown, I’m not anxious anymore. I don’t crave going out, and video calls have replaced face-to-face meetings very well: they no longer feel fake. I don’t perceive the screen anymore, but the person on the other side.
Habits are changing. I can’t go out to the supermarket when I’m bored (yes, I do that, or used to, anyways) or call a friend to meet at the neighborhood bar, but I took on Animal Crossing New Horizons, and as a distraction it’s a lifesaver. I’m making more music, I’m drawing more, and I play with my kids a lot more than before the pandemic.
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When we moved into the house where my family and I live, it occurred to me that it would be super cool and educational to have a solar system model in the ceiling of my kid’s room.
And it would be a lot cooler —I thought— if the distances between the planets’ orbits and their size were proportional to their real-life counterparts, the light bulb in the center of the ceiling being the sun. I got really excited.
With all the excitement still in me, I got in front of my computer to calculate said distances. That’s when it hit me: I knew nothing about the solar system size.
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Before photography was invented, people could only see that in front of their eyes. To experience the rest of the world, people had to physically travel, or, if they couldn’t afford it, to use other’s interpretation of remote places via narrative or painting.
That’s why the invention of photography was so huge for the human race. It removed a limit that most people didn’t even thought was there, and it opened the possibility of exploring the physical world beyond our reach.
Today we don’t believe anymore that everything important was already invented, but we have an attitude of cynicism to every new thing that comes along. In 2017 we even have cars that drive themselves, and we aren’t excited at all.
These are two (now) very basic inventions that occurred during my lifetime and changed me forever.
Tag reflection
There are 16 posts saved with the tag "reflection".
